Selina stood naked before the bathroom mirror. It had been
a while since “Mirror Bitch” played a regular part in her morning routine. As
Batman became a bigger part of her waking life, his significance in her dreams
diminished. He was still there, but his presence was no longer a battlefield
for warring parts of her psyche. Once, he was a secret pleasure, and if she
allowed herself to remember that secret when she woke, something terrible would
happen. But Mirror Bitch remembered, and the little glow on her cheek when
Selina first glimpsed her reflection seemed to taunt her with something—something
that could be hers if she wasn’t such a ‘fraidy cat.

Now Batman was Bruce, and to dream of him had no power.
When the flesh and blood man rested his hand on the curve of her ass as they
slept, a clandestine embrace on a dreamscape rooftop was nothing to hide from.
Selina barely noticed when she started remembering her dreams, nor was she
aware that Mirror Bitch had gradually faded from her world as there ceased to be
anything in the mirror in those first seconds of the day to start her mind
wandering down certain paths while she washed her face, showered and dressed.

Today’s early morning stumble into the bathroom therefore
brought a sense of déjà vu: a dying ember of something in her eye, which,
the second she glimpsed it, brought a flash of something else. Judgment?
Annoyance? Judgmental annoyance… merged with defensiveness and dread… creating
a vague sense that it was a bad morning and she didn’t feel well. Catlike,
Selina responded to the idea by yawning. She considered going back to bed but
decided exercise would do her more good. She yawned again, but this time stuck
a ready toothbrush into her mouth before it closed. –brush, brush– –brush,
brush– And then as she saw her face in the mirror again, recognition hit:
Mirror Bitch.

–brush, brush–

Okay, yes, maybe a certain –brush, brush–
covert
layer had formed under her relationship with Batman.

–brush, brush–

Denial was back. Or… not really “denial,” but… he always
had a tendency to focus on the work when the personal stuff got too
complicated.

–brush, brush–

She knew the database was a peace offering. Asking her to
put her criminal expertise to work for him was Batman’s way of smoothing it
over. And it’s not like she didn’t enjoy it –brush, brush– making a
comprehensive, annotated database of all the loot worth taking among Foundation
insiders. Not just ‘thinking like a cat burglar’ again, but doing it so openly:
writing out the analysis of each piece, why it was worth taking and special
things to keep in mind planning out each heist –brush, brush– knowing he
would read it. –brush, brush– Batman would.Knowing it was
opening up that most special and felonious part of her—to him, for him.
–brush, brush– And using all the BatTech systems to do it. It was… it was…

–brush, brush–

Intimate.

–brush, brush–

It was sexual and intimate in a completely new way.

–brush, brush– –spit–

And it changed the subject. It filled the space that might
have otherwise been left by “I cannot allow Ra’s al Ghul to have that kind of
influence over my life.” Selina poured a little mouthwash into her glass,
swished and spat. “I had an epiphany when I went to Atlantis.” –swish,
swish– What did she expect, really?

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Catwoman.”
“Why Batman, how hard do you want it to get?” “This isn’t a game.”

What did she expect? –swish, swish– What could she expect? He was a
jackass, he’d always been a jackass. He was quite romantic and incredibly
loving in his way, but His Way had always been –swish, swish– the way of
a man who devoted his life to a mission, who gave it his mind and body, his
fortune and his industry, even his identity.

So his idea of a proposal didn’t exactly dwell on her. So
there was more Crime Alley than ‘I can’t imagine my life without you.’ So it
was “that flight to Mongolia” and not ‘I want to grow old with you and give you
children.’ That was Bruce. “I simply cannot allow Ra’s al Ghul to have that
kind of influence over my life” was quintessentially Bruce. –spit–

‘I had an epiphany. My views have
changed. (So now we’re getting married, done deal.)’ That was Bruce at his
most Brucian. He invented Batman because the way society was set up to
fight crime didn’t suit him. –gargle– What did she expect in a proposal:
‘Make me the happiest man in the world’? –spit–

Selina splashed off her face, but decided to postpone the
rest until after her exercise. Then she stopped at the bed on her way to her
suite. Bruce was still asleep, turned away from the window whose curtains
Alfred would soon open to rouse him. His arm bent over his face with a bit of
the black bedsheet pulled up to shield him further, he actually looked like a bat
preemptively shielding himself from the intrusive light to come, and as usual, Selina’s pique with Batman wavered when faced with the man under the mask being
particularly adorable. She blew a kiss, then left the room.

By the time she crossed the hall into her suite, however,
pique had returned. It was that thought of Alfred opening the curtains.

“We
should tell Alfred first.”

She lay back on her Bowflex and grabbed onto the handles
like she had a grudge against them.

“We
should tell Alfred first.”

She slid into position to maximize tension on
the rods and began a sequence of punishing line crunches.

I had an epiphany.My views have
changed. We should tell Alfred first, then the kids and then Clark.
–crunch– In her mind’s ear, she amended the thought to his imagined inner
monologue a few days before: I had an epiphany, my views have changed. I
should tell Selina first, then Alfred and the kids and the League. –crunch–

The rest of the crunches were spent, for no particular
reason, translating the phrase ‘Psychobat jackassery’ into every language she
spoke. This was followed by a round of resistance kicks conjugating the verb
‘to whip,’ and finally cross stretches devoted to a rapid-fire multi-linguistic
rhapsody on I-She-He-You-They whipping my-her-their Psychobat adversary for
his-your-their epic jackassery.

So there.

Woof.

Alfred believed in tradition. That was his thought as he
saw his reflection in an antique, mahogany shaving mirror that rested on a low
tallboy in his modest but well-furnished room. He gave the bottom edge of his
hair a critical look as he set down his comb, deciding he was overdue for a
trim. He was no Luddite. He welcomed technology and particularly the
labor-saving devices that allowed him to manage Master Bruce’s affairs without a
full, permanent staff. But he did not believe in gadgetry for its own sake, and
he vehemently disapproved of any innovation that displaced long-standing systems
that worked. It was an issue at the forefront of his thoughts these days,
standing in front of this mirror and combing his hair as he considered the first
tasks of the day before him.

Butlers had been running a hot iron over their employer’s
morning newspaper for more than a hundred years. And men of Bruce Wayne’s
stature in the world—the men who built and ran empires—had begun each day by
taking those pristine, uncreased newspapers from the little basket on the side
of their breakfast trays made for that very purpose, or alternately by picking
them up from beside their plate if breakfast was served in the dining room, and
using those minutes over juice and coffee to acquaint themselves with happenings
in the world. It worked. And Alfred did not trust the idea of news
alerts pinging throughout the day on laptops and phones as a substitute for that
time-honored ritual.

He did recognize that the news on those printed pages was
no longer the most current available, and he had noted that when Master Bruce
and Miss Selina breakfasted in the dining room, their conversation often
referenced the website of this newspaper or that one which they had obviously
consulted on their own before coming downstairs. He saw the need to bring the
morning newspaper up to date, but he had not yet perfected a way to do so while
preserving its essential function in the daily routine. He had been
experimenting with one of the new Wayne Tech tablets, equipped with its
revolutionary smart chip, which he had set up to pull news from The Gotham
Times, Wall Street Journal and The Daily Planet, along with headlines from a
variety of other sources that might be pertinent to Batman. He had been
refining these searches for nearly six weeks, perusing the results himself and
making what adjustments he thought best to keep the end product most like the
existing newspaper, but more timely. Most often these adjustments reduced the
“pertinent to Batman” content, for Alfred felt sure that presenting Master Bruce
with too much crime-related material at such an early hour would have an adverse
affect on his office time at Wayne Enterprises. For the past several days,
however, there were no adjustments. He made a token one yesterday, but he was
quite aware he was only doing so to delay the inevitable. If today’s digital edition was as suitable as its recent predecessors, Alfred would
be forced to conclude that the tablet was ready to make its debut on the
breakfast tray.

Unless he cheated and put it off one more day. Again. That
would be the decision before him as he decanted orange juice and heated
croissants. The idea was a good one, it was only that once Master Bruce saw the
innovation, Alfred knew there was no going back. His enthusiasm for technology
would overrule any other consideration, and if a flaw were found that Alfred had
not anticipated, getting Master Bruce to acknowledge it and return to the old
ways would be all but impossible.

Selina had finished her workout and was crossing the hall
to return to the bedroom when Alfred was coming up the stairs with the breakfast
tray. Rather than a typical “Good morning” or “You’re up early today, miss”
there was only a silent tilt of the head and a hint of surprise and uncertainty
in his eye—two emotions that were all but unheard of in Alfred Pennyworth.

“Good morning, Alfred,” she offered.

“A word, miss,” he answered, signaling a change in course
with a head-tilt and heading, tray and all, back into her suite rather than
continuing into the master bedroom.

“Something wrong, Alfred?” Selina asked as he set down the
tray on her coffee table, took a leather book from the side basket that usually
held a newspaper, and handed it to her. Taking it, she saw that it wasn’t a
book but a sleek computer tablet in a leather cover.

“The day’s news, miss,” Alfred said grimly. “There is a
letter to the editor in the Times and an Op Ed in the Gotham Observer which, I fear,
may be somewhat distressing.”

“Okay,” Selina nodded taking a breath and hitting the
button to light the screen. “Thanks for the… warning,” she managed as she began
to read, then her words trailed off as her eyes darted and flickered around the
screen. When she finished, she paused for a few seconds more, then looked up at
Alfred. “Okay,” she repeated. “I’ll tell him. And um, will try to keep
breakages to a minimum.”

She took a moment to collect herself before crossing the
hall and then padded back into the bedroom with all the silent caution she would
have used if Catwoman was there on business. She crept into the bed with equal
care, and only once she was fully in position did she risk a move that might
wake him. She let a single fingertip trace lightly along Bruce’s jaw, moving up
ever so gently to where the edge of the mask would cut across his cheek.

“Don’t even think it,” he murmured, reaching up to grab her
wrist.

“Wake up, handsome,” she said softly, but it was the
beguiling softness of a villainess coaxing him awake, not the tender whisper of
a lover. “You’ve got bigger problems than a curious kitty pawing at your mask.”

“What’s up?” he said, sliding into a seated position,
his hand reaching up reflexively to ‘check’ the mask that wasn’t there. “Did
the cat burglar strike again?”

“Yeah. Matter of fact, he hit the Brodland
townhouse, but—”

“That was the Bvlgari emeralds, right? Thermal imaging
camera on the north wall?”

“I’m loving the database, Selina. It’s great reading. The
analysis of each target, what makes it appealing, how you’d—”

“Thanks. Look, you’re not awake yet, but please try to
foc—”

“I’m awake enough to get started,” Bruce said with a
stretch. “You can brief me on whatever’s happened over coffee an—”

“No! Bruce, you’re not driving, so shut up and stop trying
to take the wheel. You don’t get coffee yet because it’s a silver pot full of
scalding liquid and the cups are breakable.”

His eyes narrowed, and Selina felt the slightest of density
shifts. She knew there would be no more Morning-Bruce trying to smooth over the
proposal with chatty compliments. When he spoke again, it would be a minimalist
Bat-gravel.

“What’s happened?”

“Falstaff made his move,” she answered. “The cat burglar
might be the headline, but the real story is playing out on the inside pages.
He’s got this letter to the editor printed in the Times, practically a
love letter to Wayne Tech: the smart chip, aerogel, robotics and communication
systems…”

“The kind of thing he was saying last night about our work
with Sub Diego.”

“Right. It’s in the print edition, so it was obviously
written days ago and slated for publication today. The day’s headline just
happens to be the cat burglar, now three for three hitting people while they
were at a Wayne event, and that purely coincidental happenstance seems to have
inspired a columnist at the Gotham Observer to write an Op Ed, fresh off the
cyber press in the online edition…”

“Meaning Falstaff got lucky or he played a hunch. If
another Wayne guest was hit during the Water Ball, then his letter would have
more traction outside the relatively small readership of the letters column.”

“Played a hunch or he’s actually in league with the cat.
My two-bit opinion is nobody put that Op Ed together in ten minutes after
reading today’s Times. It was ready for Falstaff’s letter and the cat burglar
news to hit at the same time.”

“What’s the gist?”

“Falstaff is a visionary. As an outsider, he’s able to see
the significance and potential of Wayne Tech which Gotham in general is blind
to, and the reason for our collective lack of understanding is that we’re all
following your lead.”

“Wait a minute, this is one of the Observer’s regular
contributors or someone new?”

“Bruce, look where we are. Is this a cave briefing or a meeting at the Watchtower? I haven’t dug into this; I haven’t even had my
shower yet.”

He grunted.

“Fine. Falstaff writes a fulsome letter to the Times
praising Wayne Tech, and ‘John Smith’ who we’ll assume is a newcomer and
Falstaff’s unacknowledged mouthpiece at the Gotham Observer responds
saying he’s a visionary. Go on.”

“None of us see the potential in Wayne Tech the way
Falstaff does because we’re following your lead. You personally, as the glib and
good-natured simpleton who doesn’t really understand anything about the company
but parrots whatever the PR department tells you. Being a bunch of soulless
salesmen, they can’t be expected to have the vision and insight of a Gregorian
Falstaff.”

“I get the idea. Let’s skip the rest of the intro and get
to the part that would lead to my throwing coffee.”

“Rather than recognizing Falstaff’s worth and thanking our
lucky stars that such a man has come to enlighten us, we shunned him. He’s a
pariah among Gotham’s elite. The same elite that welcomes an admitted thief
shuns Falstaff…”

She trailed off, feeling Bruce’s eyes bore into her.

“Go on,” he graveled.

Rather than say it out loud, Selina took the tablet from
behind her back and handed it over. Bruce took it and, after a final attempt to
meet her eyes, he looked down and started to read.

“…for the crime of not being the last scion of a
founding family,” he murmured as he skimmed. “Luckyenough to
escape the current climate of suspicion towards the privileged class thanks to
the romantic patinaof a family tragedy… Gotham’s poor little
rich boy, gilding his excesses and his philanthropy alike in… WHAT THE
HELL?!”

Selina braced for the sound of a tablet hurled with the
force of a batarang into a Regency mirror, but no such
outburst came. Instead, Bruce was staring into the distance, those waves of
willful intensity that were pure Batman pulsing and pounding around him.

After a minute, his head lifted slightly as he took in a
sharp breath through his nostrils. His eyes flickered sharply across the room
in the way Selina had seen when he was putting himself into the mind of his
opponent. Then he let his fingers open limply and the tablet toppled head first
into the folds of the bedsheets, like the Titanic prior to sinking.

“Go,” he said finally.

Selina stared for a moment before managing a bewildered
“W-what?”

“The only thing I have to say on this, you do not want to
hear. Go off somewhere. Tell Alfred to forget breakfast and dinner. I’ll grab
something at the penthouse and leave on patrol from there.”

“Bruce, you—”

“I’m out of here in about five minutes, so if you want to
ride into town together, dress fast.”

“Oh,” Selina breathed. “Oh.”

“Problem?”

“No,” she said, rising slowly from the bed and moving
towards the door. “I’ll get myself into town. Psychobat driving is never much
fun. The thought of him stuck in morning rush hour without being able to floor
it is absolutely horrifying.”

The 16th Floor was one of the most secure in the
Wayne Tower. To the outside world, it was the HQ for Wayne Tech R&D. To an
outside thief, it rivaled Information Technologies on 38, Aerospace on 41, the
executive suites on 75 and 76; senior management and the board room on 77. To
an inside thief like Selina who knew all of the building’s secrets, the
16th Floor could even boast a few features shared only by the private
elevator to Bruce’s penthouse.

Since the Foundation launched its extranet to connect the
Foundation office in Sub Diego with the one in the Wayne Tower, the 16th
Floor had sacrificed a supply closet and a handicapped washroom to become the
Sub Diego Meta-Comm Facility. Within this dark, long and narrow space, a row of
what Norm had called “land doubles” stood along the wall like toy soldiers. In
their dormant state, the units looked like iPads mounted on streamlined
Segways—until someone in the Sub Diego office logged in. Then the tablet which
constituted the head would flash a Wayne Tech logo and flicker through a series
of start up and sync screens that revealed a far more sophisticated mechanism.
While the tablet-head booted, a black disc at the bottom of the “Segway” would
erupt into a star pattern of thin red beams, like a cluster of lasers fanning
out in all directions. Once the surroundings were mapped and the start up
routines completed, the face of the Sub Diego operator would appear on the
screen and the unit would begin to move. It had become a familiar sight in the
WT offices: one or two land doubles rolling down the hall, calling the elevator
with a Bluetooth signal and saying “Good morning” if someone was already in the
car.

Most Sub Diegans kept California time, but Juan and Alan
preferred to get up early and check in with Norm at the start of the East Coast
work day. Today they had an added incentive: a meeting with Tim
Drake to prep for. Juan absolutely LOVED the high tech meeting room they could
interface with in the Foundation office. It looked like a room out of Star
Trek, with a level of tech toys he would never have gotten to see, let alone
operate, if it hadn’t been for the bizarre twist of fate that made him a water-breather. In front of each seat at the long conference table there was a small,
tilted screen half-recessed into the table-top. They looked like clear glass,
until the presenter started showing slides or video, then they mirrored whatever
he showed on the huge projection screen at the front of the table and the two HD
screens on each side wall. Best of all was the back wall, clear glass, cool as
can be!

Juan relished the idea of using it—of being the STAR OF THE
SHOW using it—whenever Wayne showed off the Sub Diego operation to press and
universities. Today’s meeting with Tim Drake was sort of a dry run. He was
happy to help the kid, sure, but he really wanted experience showing off the
system to surfacers. His land double went straight to Norm’s cubicle and, after
a few good mornings and hopes Norm wasn’t too hung over from partying all night
after the ball (Quoth the Normster: “As if.”), Norm unlocked the conference room
and four lights sprang to life on the top of Juan’s tablet. One solid blue…
synced… One solid green… synced… The second blue flickered with the
intermittent sending and receiving of data... The last solid blue… synced…

..:: No, he’s here,::.. Juan’s image replied from
the tablet screen. ..::He wanted to stop off in Gwen Chatham’s office. Says
Selina Kyle starts the day there whenever she’s in the office and he wants to
thank her for the party last night. You know what he’s like with all that Miss
Manners stuff.::..

Norm thought it was a nice idea, but he wasn’t sure Selina
would be in today. He started to brief Juan on the developments in the morning
news, when Juan skipped ahead. Making use of his uplink with the company
intranet that could access the Wayne systems faster than people right in the
corporate HQ, he pulled Falstaff’s letter and the Op Ed from the PR department's clipping service
and was skimming as Norm talked until:

..:: Oh NOT COOL!::.. he exploded.

“Uh, what?” Norm asked.

..:: Here, look at this,::.. said Juan, sending his
data to the conference room screens. ..:: This is the original Op Ed when it
was clipped. See that light, that means there’s been a change on the website,
so I went to look, and here.::..

“You could just tell me,” Norm pointed out as Juan split
the image on the viewscreen to put the live internet site next to the memo from
PR department.

..:: You’re no fun. Here, okay, this is what’s
changed. Some asshat posted a comment on the Op Ed saying it’s obvious Selina
Kyle is the cat burglar and Wayne is paying off the cops to ignore it. Somebody
else says how she’s kind of got an alibi, being at the party and all, and asshat
calls them a retard. Then he goes on to say how Wayne is ‘flouting’ her—I think
flaunting is what they mean—by y’know, having her continue as his date and kind
of the hostess at all these events. ‘Flouting’ her in front of the donors is
just another sign of how far above everyone he believes himself to be. If any
of them brought her to Ball Number Three after Burglary One and Two, they would
have been ruined. Or at least decently embarrassed. But when he does it, it’s
a sign of his untouchable stature. Like a Roman emperor.::.

..:: It’s an anonymous comment on an Op Ed, it’s a net
troll, what do you expect?::..

“History Channel just did a special on Caligula; they’ve
been advertising it all week. It keeps dancing in the corner of the screen
while you’re trying to watch something else. A real troll with nothing
better to do but sitting around watching American Pickers would know how to
spell it. ‘Calibulla’ is somebody that knows exactly what they’re doing, trying
to look like a barely literate internet asshat.”

Selina had never worried much about cops. From Interpol to
Scotland Yard, they never came close to coming close to coming close to being
dangerous. Initially, she chafed when tabloids floated the idea that anyone
less than Batman was capable of catching Catwoman, but as the years passed, she
came to see the insults brought a few perks. The police had no idea how
far they were from being effective, and these know-nothing nobodies in the press
simply fed their ignoranceon that point. The police would never improve
their approach if they weren’t aware of its shortcomings, and that left her free
to play with the more amusing adversary.

Then he ceased to be an adversary, she ceased to be a
thief, and the whole issue became moot until Detectives Reed and Rowanski came
to the manor to question her. And they’d come, not about any crime of
Catwoman’s, but about an explosion that nearly blew her up. Bruce took the
opportunity to demonstrate what the Wayne money could do to shield her, and
sidestepping those protections, Selina found she could finesse the detectives as
neatly as she always imagined. Apart from Reed’s (or maybe it was Rowanski’s)
final assessment that if Bruce wasn’t a total moron he should marry that
woman,the interview was a triumph.

So police simply weren’t something she worried about, even
now that she arrived at the Foundation to see Detective Rowanski camped outside
Gwen Chatham’s door. Men whose suits, shoes and demeanor marked them as his
colleagues hovered around the offices of Madison Hargrove and Cynthia Merithew,
but Selina ignored them—as well as a jolt in the pit of her stomach that she’d
never felt in the wake of any crime she actually committed—and sashayed boldly
through the reception area.

“Detective,” she said, greeting Rowanski with all the poise
and assurance of a jewel thief whose billionaire boyfriend had just been falsely accused
of bribing him. “I could have sworn that, when we met last, you
said you weren’t in Major Case and didn’t investigate ‘art thefts or burglaries
involving safes and vaults.’”

“That’s right, ma’am. I’m still assigned to the Arson
Squad, but given the delicate nature of today’s business, it was suggested that
I come along and supervise.”

“Because we got along so well last time?” Selina said with
a cynically raised eyebrow undercutting the flirtatious lilt in her tone. “You
may not find me as charming as a suspect as I was as a victim.”

“Due respect, Miss Kyle, you’re not a suspect, and I’m not
here to question you. Quite the opposite. You have an alibi, you were in a
ballroom with a couple hundred of the most important people in the city during
each one of the robberies. For me to ignore that and investigate you anyway
would be a pretty obvious response to that nonsense on the Internet this
morning. The Chief is adamant we don’t give that impression, so…”

“So you’re here to not talk to me,” Selina affirmed in the
tone she used to humor Whiskers.

“That’s right. While we investigate whatever the connection
is between the Wayne Foundation and the robberies, because there certainly is
one.”

Another raised voice answered, male and not quite as
distinct, but including the words ‘last resort’ ‘one phone call’ and ‘subpoena.’

Selina and Rowanski’s eyes met and, after a silent beat,
they paced each other to Madison’s door. A momentary ‘after you’ delay when
they got there ended in Selina being the one who actually turned the doorknob to
find Madison standing in front of her desk with her arms outstretched as if
forming a human shield between her files and an encroaching army. Knowing the
detailed dossiers Madison kept on the biggest names and deepest pockets in the
city, Selina could understand why.

“There is no such thing as Charity-Donor privilege,” said
the plain-clothes detective who, though angry, did not resemble an army. What
he did resemble was the cynical, dog-faced, wise-cracking senior partner from a
‘ripped from the headlines’ police procedural—the one who would say anything to
anybody, political consequences be damned. Which, Selina guessed, is why
Rowanski had been assigned to hold his leash.

“Everybody count to ten,” he ordered—not a moment too soon,
as Madison performed that intake of breath which signals a heated and lengthy
retort is about to begin.

“Madison Hargrove, our development director,” Selina said
by way of introduction. “This is Detective Rowanski, reasonable human being.
And… I don’t know who you are,” she added, with a pleasant smile for the
plain-clothes detective (who would have found it infinitely less pleasant if he
knew it was the same smile she gave Killer Croc when he was on a tirade at the
Iceberg.)

“Schmidt,” he said grudgingly. “I am trying to impress on
your ‘development director’ that these fundraisers you’ve been having are the
only link between the victims of these robberies and we need to see the
guest list.”

“And I am trying to convey to Detective Schmidt that the
‘guest list’ is the donor list, and while I’m happy to give you the
public list that goes in the annual report, those who give to the Foundation on
the condition of anonymity will remain anonymous.”

“Then we’ll get a court order and seize your files,”
Schmidt barked.

“I bet you miss arson,” Selina whispered to Rowanski.

“When you pry them from my cold dead fingers,” Madison
hissed.

“Time!” Selina called. “Reality check. Detective Schmidt,
if you think any judge in this town will sign that search warrant, you obviously
don’t have a clue what kind of people are on that list. Madison,” she paused
and delivered the rest with a girlish wink. “I think if the gentlemen ask
nicely, there’s a way we can help them without betraying any confidences.”

“Ask nicely?!” Schmidt rasped—which Selina
expected. Outrage from a blowhard cop was absolutely expected. It was
Madison’s reaction that interested Selina. If Madison was the woman she hoped,
one capable of researching Gotham’s upper crust with the same acquisitive
instincts as Selina herself, she should be tickled at the idea.

“Naturally, the Foundation wants to do all it can to assist
the police in this unfortunate matter,” she said in a warm, honeyed voice which
curled her lip into the slightest hint of a coy smile. “If you actually
have a proposal that wouldn’t compromise our position with the anonymous
donors…”

She trailed off and looked expectantly at Selina. Selina
smiled and looked expectantly at Detective Schmidt. Rowanski scratched his nose
and then left his hand over his mouth to cover a grin.

“Uh, yeah, that’d be great, if you’ve got an idea,” Schmidt
said haltingly.

Selina and Madison exchanged patronizing looks, agreeing
that it was probably as close to ‘asking nicely’ as the poor ass could do
without practice.

“Okay, it’s not the people who wrote a check that you care
about,” Selina said gamely. “Anonymously or not, that’s just not the issue.
It’s the people who actually came to the parties, right? And there are,
like, four hundred cameras at the door photographing the red carpet. It’s been
over twelve hours since last night’s gala, I guarantee there are ten thousand
pictures on the internet by now.”

“That’s true,” Madison admitted.

“Yeah! Picture of Mrs. Neiderbaum wearing Halston on the
Internet, it can’t be against the rules to tell us she was there, right?”
Schmidt said petulantly.

“You’re welcome,” Selina mouthed to no one in particular.

Despite the relatively peaceful resolution of the standoff
in Madison’s office, a new link was posted in the comments thread of the Op Ed,
purporting to be video of GPD officers leaving the Wayne Tower with boxes of
files seized from the Wayne Foundation.

Lucius watched the footage with a stoic frown, then he
called Bruce to his office and they watched it together, then he watched it
a third time while Bruce was on the phone with Gwen, confirming that the incident had
not, in fact, occurred.

“Two men in blue windbreakers carrying a mail bin heaped
with binders and a box of file folders,” Lucius said wryly. “Do people really
think that’s what our files would look like? Records for the last eight years
fit on a single thumb drive.”

“Yes, but a man in an ordinary-looking business suit leaving the building
with a
piece of plastic no larger than a stick of gum, that’s not a visual for the
evening news,” Bruce noted.

“Well, if Falstaff’s plan was to set off a panic sell of
Wayne stock as the prelude to a takeover, it backfired. Trading is heavy, but
it’s likely we’re going to be up a point by the closing bell.”

“No, the stock price isn’t his target,” Bruce said with a
headshake. “He’s been talking up Wayne Tech, the unrecognized potential,
blah-blah-blah. Best advertising we could hope for. So when a scandal breaks
and does scare an investor into selling, there are three buyers waiting to grab
his shares. Price goes up, not down. If he wanted to buy as much as he could
for a takeover, he’d want to sink the price, not raise it.”

“Maybe he didn’t realize,” Lucius said. “Truth is, there
are corners of the market that miss the old you, Bruce.”

“The old me?”

“Pre-Selina, the Billionaire Bad Boy who’d make a spectacle
of himself on a regular basis. These are smart people, Bruce. They know what
this company is worth, long term. You do something crazy in the press that
makes the stock drop for a few hours, they say ‘That item’s on sale.’”

“Maybe not, but his attacks do seem to focus on you
personally. Like you said, he has nothing but praise for Wayne Tech, Wayne
Industries, parent company Wayne Enterprises. All the vitriol is pointed at
you.”

And Selina, Bruce thought. If you figure in the
cat burglar.

As if in response, there was the quick rap on the side of
the open door that announces someone who knows they’re free to enter without
knocking, followed by Selina’s voice actually saying the words:

“Knock, knock! Lucius, I wanted to pop up and make sure—Oh,
you’re here too.”

Bruce tried to take it as the casual remark of someone
who’d come into Lucius Fox’s office with the intention of seeing Lucius Fox and
simply didn’t expect anyone else to be there. He tried to ignore that it was
delivered with the same twisty frown that Catwoman reserved for sidekicks who
showed up when she expected to have Batman to herself.

“It just occurred to me, in light of the day’s shit storm,”
she went on, “that it wouldn’t be good news if anyone found out what I’ve been
teaching you. Between the Data-Lock and our other project, you’re two of the
ten most formidable thieves in the country at this point.”

“Not to worry, my work is all proprietary,” Lucius
answered. “Covered by trade secrets protections. Technically, I shouldn’t even
tell Bruce what we’ve been working on.”

“Okay. Well, maybe mothball it anyway for the duration,”
Selina suggested. “You’re probably too busy to bother with it right now anyway,
with all that’s going on out there. Must be DefCon 4 up here.”

Lucius agreed to the mothballing, but explained that the
stock was healthy as ever and, while he and Bruce were staying on top of the
situation, ‘Defcon’ didn’t enter into the matter.

“Well that’s good. Still, for the time being, I have one
less ‘student,’” she said with a wink.

“One less student?” Bruce asked.

“We’ll talk later,” she said pointedly.

His eyes narrowed with rooftop menace, and hers answered
with rooftop defiance. ‘It has nothing to do with Batman, don’t be a
jackass’ they said so clearly that Bruce unconsciously let out a grunt.

“Actually, I was just heading back to my office,” he said
lightly, though a surge of Bat-intensity belied the casual tone. “If you don’t
have to rush back downstairs, maybe you could come with,” he concluded with the
same fierce glare that used to accompany Batman’s Put it back.

Of course, when it had been Batman ordering her to
put it back, Catwoman had never once complied, which made Selina’s easy
agreement now slightly puzzling. When they reached his office, she broke into a
Cheshire grin as he shut the door.

“Knew that would get you,” she said proudly.

“Explain.”

“Well, the thing in Lucius’s office is no big deal. I
just… spent the day teaching your staff how to handle cops, which is a whole new
level of weird. You have some smart ladies running that Foundation, Bruce.
Madison, Gwen, Cynthia, all first-rate. Just unschooled in how to use it to handle tightass lawmen. And now, thanks to me, the savvy and sassy women who work for
you know how to use it… to handle the cops investigating the cat burglar jewel
thief. New level of weird.”

“But not what you actually wanted to talk about.”

“No. No it wasn’t. I just saw the crime scene photos from
the Coleman penthouse.” Bruce raised an eyebrow, and rather than get derailed
with a long explanation, she quickly said “Long story: that Detective Rowanski
had pictures of the stolen jewelry, and he was going through them with Gwen to
see if she remembered them from earlier galas. These other pictures in
the file were from the crime scenes, and when I got to the ones from the Coleman
Penthouse, there was this… empty spot on the wall where a painting was missing.”

“Yes, the burglar hasn’t confined himself to jewelry. You
knew that from the Beaufort townhouse.”

“Where he took a Faberge box and a silver letter opener
from the desk, yes, the desk right in front of the safe. And at the
Colemans’ there were some bearer bonds in the safe along with the jewelry, and last night at the Brodlands’
it was some knick-knack from a table that was right inside the window they came
through—that’s an impulse purchase. It’s something he grabbed on his way out:
‘Oh this is cute.’ Stick it in the bag. The bearer bonds were in the
safe right next to the jewels. The Faberge box was right there at the desk.

“But the painting is different. ‘The Spice Merchant’s
Wife,’ it was in the foyer, right inside the front door over the little entrance
table with the mail tray. Now, our cat came in through the window, and
the safe with the jewelry was in the study next to the bedroom. What’s
he doing in the foyer? He wouldn’t have any reason to go into that part of the
house to see this thing and pick it up on impulse. And it’s small, not like he
would have spotted it from two rooms away when he was going through the living
room.”

“You’re saying, what, that he went into the foyer
specifically to get this painting?”

“Sort of, but that doesn’t make sense either. It’s not
famous or outrageously valuable.”

Bruce’s eyes bored into hers.

“Then why,” he said finally, although it seemed more like a
prompt than a question.

“I was wrong. When I was poking holes in the movie, I said
there was no reason for a jewel thief to be doing their thing while the owners
were out at a Wayne gala because they’d be wearing the best pieces. And I was
wrong. There is a reason: to make it clear that Bruce Wayne’s guests are your
target. And the reason for taking The Spice Merchant’s Wife is for that
photograph of the crime scene: that empty space on the wall right over the mail
tray with the invitation to the next Wayne gala sitting right underneath where
you can’t miss it. Where the police can’t miss it, where they’ll be dusting it
for fingerprints. Where the insurance investigators won’t miss it. Where Batman won’t
miss it.”

Bruce lifted his steepled fingers to his lips and thought
it over.

Bruce Wayne’s guests... Bruce Wayne who’s living with Selina Kyle, the cat
burglar; that was one angle. He dismissed the idea that it could be an attack on
her. The world had seen Selina brazenly reveal herself as Catwoman with no
repercussions from Batman or the police. So if the cat burglar preying on
Wayne donors was an attack, it was aimed at him personally or at the pair of them as a
couple. Either he was to be seen as so irresponsible and lacking in judgment
that he exposed himself and his peers to this horrid criminal person, or else he
was the one who was meant to see things differently. If Selina was going to be
this kind of a liability, she would have to go.

None of it quite gelled with Falstaff as the puppet master
pulling the cat burglar’s strings, but Bruce’s suspicions were already moving in
another direction.

He looked uncomfortably at Selina, the word “Go” hovering
on his lips again.

“Let’s get out of here,” he graveled finally. “Go…
downstairs.”

She didn’t object; she assumed he wanted to access the Bat
Computer. But when they reached the private elevator, he hesitated, his finger
poised over the button.

“Unless you’d rather talk in the penthouse. If you want
something to eat or...”

“No, I’m good,” she said. “Cave or penthouse, whatever you
want.”

Again he hesitated. Then he pressed his finger decisively
and the elevator began to move.

“Bruce, what’s going on?” she asked as they descended.

“You’re just the worst possible person to be here right
now,” he murmured.

“Gee thanks, love you too,” she spat.

“I don’t mean it like that it’s… it’s helpful to
have someone to talk to, to talk through the case with. And this is a cat
burglar; you have special knowledge and amazing insights. If I’m completely
honest with you about what I think is going on, you might have the answer to end
it. But you are literally the last person in the world I want to say
this to.”

“Oh, I am going to love this,” Selina muttered. “I haven’t
had this many mixed messages from you since your brilliant plan to protect me
from Joker by hiding me in solitary at Blackgate.”

“If you remember, I knew that you wouldn’t go for it, and I
only said it to bait you into ‘stealing’ a chemically tainted beacon so I could
track you and trap him!”

“I remember that’s how you decided to frame it after
you had to admit that my plan was better than yours. That I had an idea—nay, a
strategy—to save my skin and catch Joker, and that strategy was
better than yours. The only way to take the sting out was to claim it was
actually a part of your plan all alo—”

“It was.”

“I am not getting sucked into this. I am not allowing you
to run some, some goddamn protocol meant to remind me what an unmitigated
jackass you used to be in order to make whatever new bit of Psychobat
Nincompoopery you want to spring on me look less idiotic by comparison.”

“IT’S RA’S!” Bruce yelled. “THAT’S WHO’S BEHIND THIS, ARE
YOU HAPPY?”

The doors to the Batcave opened, but neither moved, and
after a moment, the doors closed again.

“You’ve said it yourself a dozen times,” Bruce said, biting
off each word. “The Demon’s Head doesn’t have a lot of new ideas. The one he
has come up with on his own in the last quarter century was the one
protocol he didn’t take from me. I had ways to neutralize the rest of the
Justice League, but he had to get me out of the way too. And the way he
chose to keep me occupied was defiling my parents’ grave and sending me a
picture of their coffins suspended over an unknown Lazarus Pit. Say you want
about Ra’s al Ghul, Selina, and there is very little you have to say on the
subject that I don’t agree with, but hairdo or not, he knows how to push my
buttons.”

“Let’s not endow him with special powers, Bruce. He knows
your identity. At that point, you’re one big button. The only thing
that requires any intellectual acumen is not bumping it accidentally.”

“Falstaff has been doing nothing but push my buttons since
that first day at the Empire Club,” Bruce said hatefully. “He’s done it too
well; he has been eerily on target. And now… Now look at where all
this is heading. He’s not attacking Wayne Enterprises, he’s smearing The
Foundation. That’s not just my parents, Selina, that’s… The Foundation
that has an office in Sub Diego, Sub Diego that is hardwired to the offices
here. And Sub Diego which now has an embassy in Atlantis.

“It’s Ra’s. Selina, it isRa’s, the words have been
pounding in my brain since I read those phrases in that preposterous Op Ed this
morning. But I couldn’t SAY THAT TO YOU because of that stupid—because you won’t just
LET IT GO about those five stupid minutes at the MoMA—”

“Damnit, I don’t have a whip!” Selina yelled, flogging his
breast pocket ineffectually with her purse. “You insufferably jac… that’s
vibrating.” She stopped mid-flog, and pointed at his jacket pocket.

Bruce reached inside his jacket, took out his vibrating
phone, and answered with a scowl.

“Yes, Lucius?” he said. “Right now? No, I’m ten feet from
a television. I’ll watch from here.” He hung up and pressed the elevator
button to open the doors.